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Outsourcing kids’ birthdays the latest source of parental shame

The superhero party Susan Kendal threw for her son Rudi’s fifth birthday included homemade invitations; homemade capes for each child; homemade loot bags; and a makeshift photo studio in which the kids were Photoshopped to appear as though flying. The Ontario mom says, “I think the investment of love and thought, if you’re making something specifically for someone, carries into the world.”Photo: Susan Kendal/Postmedia News

It sounds like a win for common sense: As the marketplace for children’s birthday services looks ever more like its own country, the pendulum is swinging back toward homemade touches and hands-on personalization. But an intriguing new study suggests this return to “simplicity” is actually fraught with complication.

Reporting in the Journal of Consumer Culture, researchers find that even as anxiety around commercial excess is seeing renewed emphasis on DIY, immoderation isn’t being reduced so much as shifted.

“The motherly competition around parties now relies more on the time and effort put in than the amount of money expended,” said Jan Brace-Govan, a PhD and senior lecturer in marketing at Monash University in Australia.

The study draws on a 15-year analysis of magazine advertisements, cultural discourse around childhood, and in-depth interviews with the mothers of kids aged five to seven. Co-authors Brace-Govan and Laura Jennings ultimately found that “fending off materialism was important to all the mothers,” who believed that birthday parties should be a personalized expression of love without commercial overkill – but that the effort required for such a feat “could never be excessive.”

“Time…was the bottomless resource provided and the effort often, paradoxically, meant that the mother worked so hard on the day of the party that she was drained and exhausted,” said Brace-Govan.

Despite heavy investments of time and energy, the mothers universally underplayed their efforts, and took great care in giving the illusion of simplicity. The researchers also observed a tendency to dismiss any consumerism stemming from DIY birthday projects.

Said one mother in the study: “If I make it, it doesn’t seem so excessive as if I’d bought it. And if you buy things, it just doesn’t seem as if you’ve put (in) the same effort.”

The researchers conclude that the birthday party pushback against commercialism “doesn’t remove consumption but rather shifts it towards an understated, almost overlooked, consumption of the equipment and labour needed to create ‘homemade.’”

Working stay-at-home mom Susan Kendal, who lives in Barrie, Ont., said it’s a dilemma faced at every birthday: she doesn’t want to “buy into the excess,” yet devotes a significant amount of time and money to personalized touches.

“I think the investment of love and thought, if you’re making something specifically for someone, carries into the world,” said Kendal, who has two young sons.

Her five-year-old’s recent superhero birthday, for example, featured custom capes, each with the wearer’s first initial sewn to it; themed homemade invitations; hand-crafted loot bags; and a makeshift photo studio in which the youngsters were Photoshopped to appear as though flying.

Superhero party

The cost? About $200 in expenses and 40 hours of prep.

“Of course I want to look like an awesome mom who did a great job,” said Kendal, 35. “But I also find it embarrassing and totally off-base when people think I’ve gone way overboard, or think I’ve done it for outward appearances, when really it’s an act of love for my child – and because I adore doing it.”

Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, has mixed feelings about the trend. While she’s delighted by its origin as a rejection of the commodity frontier, she’s nonetheless troubled by the use of birthday parties as a measure of good parenting.

“It goes along with this climate of competition around child-rearing that’s especially evident in upper-middleclass homes,” said Linn, a psychologist. “Once you throw a big birthday party for your child, the next year you need to top it. So the competition is both with other people and yourself. It ends up putting a lot of pressure on kids before they’re ready.”

Misty Harris is a nationally recognized journalist known for her stories on social science, consumer trends, demographics, academic studies, and marketing. For more than a decade, her articles have been... read more featured on the front pages of Canada’s top newspapers, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist, Montreal Gazette, The Province, The Leader-Post, The Star-Phoenix, The Windsor Star, and Ottawa Citizen, in addition to such online news hubs as Canada.com.
Harris has been honoured by the Society for Features Journalism; appeared as a pop culture commentator on CTV, Global News and BBC World Service; reported on fashion, health and lifestyle issues for Flare magazine; and spoken as a guest lecturer at universities in Canada and the U.S.
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